I am up to something

But even I do not know what it is.

I have had the strong urge for the past few days to spruce up the attic--to clean, to throw out, to store, to hang pictures, to rearrange, and to do all manner of decorating things I haven't really done since I moved in oh so many moons ago. So, yesterday, rather than grading the stack of dreaded papers on my desk, I almost completely reinvented the 897 square feet surrounding the desk. I could chalk this up to the need to procrastinate. I could explain it as Spring-cleaning energy. These are probably contributing factors, but it feels like something more.

It started after hanging out with Ex Turned Friend earlier this week. I gave him a longtime cherished object of mine as a going-away gift. It is something I have had for twenty-five years and have carried with me from town to town for all of my adult life. But it has been gathering dust in the garret, and ETF always really really loved this thing . I realized soon after I found out that he was leaving that it was going to go with him. I wanted him to have it and I did not want it anymore. Giving it to him was a symbolic gesture not only about my connection and friendship with him but about me clearing out, letting go, changing my life.

I feel sentimental and silly writing about it. (I have been feeling terribly self-conscious lately about seeming maudlin or sentimental or expressing anything close to a feeling at all to anyone around me.) But whatever this is I am going through--all of this sadness and all of this building energy--seems important. And it doesn't feel sentimental or silly or depressive or melancholy. I know when I am wallowing. This is not wallowing.

Dr. Crazy thinks I am nesting, and whatever had hold of me yesterday certainly had the charge of an instinct. What I am preparing the nest for is at this point anyone's guess.